Ananda Bose from Kerala is the new Bengal governor

The retired IAS officer will replace La. Ganesan, who was made the governor when the BJP fielded incumbent Jagdeep Dhankhar in the vice-presidential poll

C.V. Ananda Bose: Twitter @KeralaGovernor

TT Bureau   |   New Delhi/Calcutta   |  18.11.22  : C.V. Ananda Bose, a retired IAS officer from Kerala, was appointed Bengal governor on Thursday. 

He will replace La. Ganesan, who was made the governor when the BJP fielded incumbent Jagdeep Dhankhar in the vice-presidential poll.

Bose’s appointment will be effective from the day he assumes office, Rashtrapati Bhavan said in a press communiqué.

Although the Trinamul Congress didn’t want to offer any comment on the likely impact of Bose’s appointment on Nabanna-Raj Bhavan relations, which reached a nadir during Dhankhar’s tenure, a source said the development was likely to please the state government top brass.

Since Dhankhar’s departure, the relationship between Nabanna and Raj Bhavan improved considerably and the best example of it was chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s visit to Chennai to attend a family function of Ganesan.

Mamata’s visit to Chennai at Ganesan’s invitation, however, didn’t please the Bengal BJP and there were murmurs that the state unit had conveyed its unhappiness to the central leadership and sought Ganesan’s replacement. 

“Several names had been doing the rounds for the past 48 hours.... The ruling party was eagerly waiting for the announcement,” said a source close to Nabanna.

Bose has served in various capacities as a bureaucrat and is best known for his housing project in Kerala — Nirmithi Kendra which promoted cost-effective and environment-friendly construction. The project had got international recognition.

The 71-year-old civil servant had retired from service in 2011. He was appointed adviser to the Meghalaya government in 2018. Bose had also headed the Supreme Court Committee on the treasures of the Sree Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram.

A senior Bengal cadre bureaucrat said as Bose was believed to have the ear of the BJP leadership, his appointment might help the state government, which was trying to convince New Delhi to lift the freeze on the flow of funds under various central government schemes.

The chief minister, a source said, will also like the “Bose surname” of the new occupant. Although from Kerala, he was named Bose by his father, who was a freedomfighter, apparently after Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.